Scholar and Kabbalist: The Life

and Work of Gershom Scholem

Edited by

Mirjam Zadoff
Noam Zadoff

leiden | boston

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Contents

Scholar and Kabbalis: An Introduction  VII

Mirjam Zadoff and Noam Zadoff

Part 1
The Researcher: Jewish Mysticism

1 Gershom Scholem’s Methodologies of Research on the Zohar  3

Daniel Abrams

2 Adventurer, (Pseudo?)-Kabbalist, and Theosophist: Gershom Scholem’s

Research on Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld  17
Patrick Benjamin Koch

3 For the Sake of a Jewish Revival: Gershom Scholem on Hasidism and Its
Relationship to Martin Buber  40
Shaul Magid

4 “Words of Substance Must Have Both One Meaning and Another”:

Reappraising the Scholem–Weiss Debate  76
Omer Michaelis

Part 2
Philosophical Context, Literary and Cultural
Connections

5 Gershom Scholem’s Kabbalah and the German–Jewish Myth  97

Amir Engel

6 The Zohar as Poetic Inspiration: Nelly Sachs’s Reading of Gershom

Scholem  114
Daniel Pedersen

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vi Contents

7 “Our Sabbatian Future”  134

Kitty Millet

8 The Impact of Sabbatianism on Society and Culture in the Yishuv and in

Israel  153
Jacob Barnai

9 Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History  171

Batsheva Goldman-Ida

Part 3
Biographical Portraits

10 The Scholem Family in Germany and German–Jewish Historical

Context  209
Jay Howard Geller

11 Gershom Scholem and Postwar Germany Reconsidered  234

Lars Fischer

Part 4
The Librarian, Book Collector and Library Owner

12 Making the Dewey Jewey: Gershom Scholem as a Librarian  253

Vanessa Freedman

13 Spiritual Sources for Zion: Gershom Scholem and the Salvage of Looted
Books and Manuscripts after the Holocaust  272
Elisabeth Gallas

14 The Alacritous Work of Librarians and the Insane Labor of Collectors:

Gershom Scholem as Book Collector and Librarian—A Collection of
Sources  292
Zvi Leshem

Index  323

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 Chapter 9

Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach

to Art History

Batsheva Goldman-Ida

Abstract

Focusing on Gershom Scholem’s time in Berlin and on his interchange with Walter
Benjamin regarding the painting by Paul Klee known as Angelus Novus (1920), I will
discuss Scholem’s ideas and exposure to art. I will also examine the application of
Scholem’s methodology to art history research.

Keywords

Anatole France – Angelus Novus – artwork – Boris Aronson – Carl Gustav Jung – Erich
(Chiram) Brauer – Friedrich Adler – Jacob and the Angel – kabbalah – Karl Kraus –
Paul Klee – Trude Krulik – Walter Benjamin

This essay traces Gershom Scholem’s significant encounters with art from
the sophisticated urbane style of the artwork in the satiric Zionist journal Die
Blauweisse Brille (The Blue and White Spectacles), which he initiated and edited
from 1915–1916; his early ideas on Cubism and Judaism; and the cutting-edge
Art Deco synagogue interior of the radical splinter group of the Blauweisse that
Scholem mentored—the Jung-Juda (Young Judea; later known as the Marken-
hof Group)—designed in 1919 by Art Deco master craftsman Friedrich Adler
(1878–1942), to the interplay of poetry, prose, and interpretation of Paul Klee’s
(1879–1940) Angelus Novus (1920) with Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), and the
mystical drawings of Trude Krulik (1900–1976) in his home in Jerusalem.

1 1915–1916: The Artwork of Die Blauweisse Brille

The Blau-Weiss (Blue-White) group was the leading Zionist youth organiza-
tion of Germany in Berlin in the early nineteenth century. Scholem’s criticism

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172 Goldman-Ida

of the group is expressed by his statement, in the Blau-Weisse Brille journal,

that described it as a “Jewish movement without youth; Jewish youth without
a movement; a youth movement without Judaism.”1 In Scholem’s magazine,
Martin Buber (1878–1965), the promoter of cultural Zionism, is depicted with a
line covering his eyes (Fig. 9.1), much as the medieval Synagoga statue from the
portal of the Strasbourg Cathedral (now at the Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame)
was blindfolded.
The journal was coedited and illustrated by Erich (Chiram) Brauer (1895–
1942)2 and illustrated by other young artists such as Kate Baer-Freyer (Fig. 9.2).
In their satiric intent, the graphic illustrations of Scholem’s youthful journal
paralleled those of the popular Munich-based Simplicissimus (1896–1944)3 and
the Berlin Jewish publication Der Schlemiel (1903–1905; 1907). This was part of a
general trend toward satire in illustration found even in the major newspapers
of Berlin such as B.Z. am Mittag and the Berliner Morgenpost.
However, while these publications had several styles of lampooning, Scho-
lem’s journal kept to a very avant-garde look. The illustrations are reminiscent
of the early drawings of Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) that accompanied his
first edition of On the Spiritual in Art (1911) (Fig. 9.3) and the illustrations of
Jean (Hans) Arp (1886–1966) to Vingt-Cinq Poèmes of the Dada poet Tristan
Tzara (1896–1963), which were published in Zurich in 1918 (Fig. 9.4).4 Other
illustrations, such as Samson and Delilah by Erich (Chiram) Brauer (Fig. 9.5),
recall works by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976) (Fig. 9.6), a member of the
German Expressionist avant-garde art group Die Brücke (The Bridge), which
was established in Dresden in 1905.

2 1917: Scholem’s Early Interest in Art and Judaism

A rare, direct reference by Scholem to Judaism and art is found in his diaries.
Dated 31 August 1917, the entry was written following a visit to an exhibition of
the Franz Werner Kluxen Collection at the avant-garde Sturm Gallery in Berlin.

1 Die Blauweisse Brille, edited by Erich Brauer and Gerhard Scholem, 1 (August 1915): n. p.
2 Dr. Erich (Chiram) Brauer later immigrated to Israel and became a noted ethnographer of
Jews from Yemen and Kurdistan. His collection is at The Israel Museum on permanent loan
from the Jerusalem Ethnographic Society. See Brauer, Ethnologie der Jemenitischen Juden; and
Brauer, The Jews of Kurdistan.
3 See Simplicissimus at http://www.simplicissimus.info/.
4 See “Tristan Tzara. Vingt-Cinq Poèmes. Illustrated by Jean Arp. Zurich: Collection Dada,
1918,” The University of Iowa Libraries. Accessed 12 May 2017, http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/
Vingt_Cinq/.

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 173

Among the exhibited works that caught Scholem’s eye was the now-famous
Cubist work Woman Playing the Violin (1911) by Pablo Picasso (Fig. 9.7):5
After discussing Picasso’s work, we find a surprising comment:

Cubism is the artistic expression of the mathematical theory of truth.

Without question, there are mystical materials introduced here, presum-
ably in the diagonal [slash] “\,” which must have some relationship to
the rays of the sun, and which divides space up in the most remarkable
way.… Jewish art (from the symbolism of the Tabernacle and the mystical
symbols of the Kabbalistic tree [ilan sefirot] etc.) [Fig. 9.8] … seems to
rest on the symbolic division of space … which almost has a Cubist feel
to it. The menorah separates space. The [four] “orders of creation” [arba
olamot] divide up space symbolically [Fig. 9.9]. The deep relationship be-
tween Judaism and mathematics is revealed here. Zion is the medium of
space.

Then he adds the following in a marginal notation:

Jewish art depends not on likenesses but on rigid, thick lines. Jewish art
resists the creation of new forms and seeks mathematical-metaphysical
knowledge. The Jewish image of man must be Cubist.6

This very interesting statement could be continued with a discussion about the
architectural structure of the Holy of Holies in the Solomonic Temple, which
is a perfect cube and which measured 20 cubits in height, length and width.7
Artists Issachar Ber Ryback (1897–1934) and Boris Aronson (1898–1980) of the
Kultur-Lige group later claimed that “only through the principle of abstract
painting, which is free of any literary [figurative] aspects, can one achieve one’s
own national formal expression [i.e., Jewish Art].”8

5 Berlin: Sturm Gallery, exhibition no. 54, August 1917: Sammlung Kluxen [V. Benes, G. Braque,
C.D. Carra, M. Chagall, A. Derain, E. Filla, A. Gleizes, W. Gimmi, E. Heckel, H. Huber, A. v.
Jawlensky, W. Kandinsky, E.L. Kirchner, O. Kokoschka, F. Léger, A. Macke, F. Marc, J. Metz-
inger, M. Pechstein, P. Picasso].
6 Scholem, Notebook 2, 31 August 1917. In Scholem, Lamentations of Youth, 179f.; cf. Gershom
Scholem Tagebücher, Vol. 2, 1917–1923, 33–34, n. 56. Thanks to Samuel Ackerman, Paris, for
our first discussion on this topic, and Zvi Leshem, Jerusalem, for his helpful assistance. On
Scholem’s discussion of Picasso with Walter Benjamin regarding the use of colorlessness in
Cubism, see Bourneuf, Paul Klee, 67–82.
7 i Kings, 6: 20; ii Chronicles 3:8; see also Ezekiel 41:4 (Ezekiel’s vision of the Third Temple).
8 Ryback and Aronson, “Di Vegn Fun der Yidisher Moleray,” 114. See also Móricz, Jewish Identi-
ties, 90, n. 70, who references their essay.

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174 Goldman-Ida

Scholem’s remarks on art and Judaism from his early years open up new
avenues of research, which can examine these remarks in the context of how
he understood the concepts of Zion and Torah at the time.

3 1919: The Synagogue Design at Markenhof

Scholem, critical of cultural Zionism and the “social club” nature of the Zionist
Blauweiss movement, joined the splinter group Jung Juda (Young Judea), and
influenced its members, later known as the Markenhof Group, to commit to
studying Hebrew and Judaism, and to immigrate to Eretz Israel (Land of Israel).
As one member, Benjamin Porath (Freund), remarked in a personal interview:
“We were a new generation in the Zionist Movement, espousing new slogans
and claims: knowledge of Hebrew, speaking Hebrew, and immigration to
Eretz-Israel.”9
Many members of the Markenhof Group were young professionals and
students from Central and Eastern Europe who had rebelled against their
parents (Fig. 9.10). Although Scholem did not join the group in Markenhof, and
immigrated to Israel in 1923, the members were guided by him and his tenets.
Of all the German hachshara (agricultural training) groups, the only one to
actually found a Kibbutz in Israel was the Markenhof Group, which started
Kibbutz Beit Zera in 1927.10
The interior of their synagogue reflects a sensibility to the cutting-edge
art of the period, a sensibility which Scholem shared. He was not, however,
directly involved in its design as far as we know. The synagogue was designed
by Art Deco master Friedrich Adler, who was at the forefront of the move
from Jugendstil (the German Art Nouveau) to the Art Deco movement. His
decorative art was discussed in 1913 by the noted art historian Paul Westheim
(1886–1963) in terms of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity).11 In 1914,
Adler had designed a total synagogue interior for the innovative Deutscher
Werkbund exhibition in Cologne. The Deutscher Werkbund was an arts and
crafts association that preceded the Bauhaus School.12
The synagogue design for a room on the second floor of the Marken-
hof site was commissioned by Konrad (Elchanan) Goldmann (1872–1942), a

9 Personal interview with Hannah Weiner, 20 March 1975, Beit Zera. See Weiner, Noʿar
t­ ossess, 95–96, n. 2.
10 Weiner, Noʿar tossess, 94. See also Frankenstein, “Hachshara im Markenhof,” 123–139.
11 Westheim, “Friedrich Adler—Hamburg,” 234–247.
12 Goldman-Ida, Friedrich Adler, 113 and illustration opposite 118.

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 175

L­ ithuanian-born factory owner and close friend of Chaim Weitzmann, who

financed the young halutzim (pioneers).13 Adler was recommended to Gold-
mann by the artist Hermann Struck (1876–1944), who later served as an advi-
sor to Meir Dizengoff (1861–1936), the Mayor of Tel Aviv and founder of the
Tel Aviv Museum. In that capacity, Struck later recommended to Dizengoff
to accept Goldmann’s donation of Adler’s Twelve Tribes Window (1919), which
was taken from the synagogue after the Markenhof Group disbanded in 1925
(Fig. 9.11).14 The Twelve Tribes Window is presently in the collection of the
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and since May 2016 has been on loan to the New Wing
of Beit Hatfutsot—The Museum of the Jewish People, Tel Aviv.
The window’s repetitive, angular polygonal forms and vibrant color scheme
of yellow, green, sea blue, mauve, and gray exhibit a very strong and highly
clarified Art Deco design, with a marked tendency toward Expressionism.
The tight composition of static and dynamic elements of the emblems of the
Twelve Tribes alternate horizontal green and yellow fields of color with red
and orange accents in dramatic vertical statements.

4 Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus—Interpretation and Experience

The work Angelus Novus (1920) by Paul Klee (1879–1940) (Fig. 9.12) was
acquired by Walter Benjamin in Munich in May 1921, and Scholem took
care of it occasionally and composed a poem on the work for Benjamin’s
birthday in 1921. In 1932, Benjamin bequeathed the work to Scholem. At one

13 “One of his brothers lived on the farm. He learned in the little synagogue that Konrad
Goldmann had built.” Ernst Fraenkel, Memoirs, 1985, unpublished manuscript transcribed
from audio tape (English), on Markenhof: tapes 100–101, pp. 122–137; tape 100, side 1, p. 122
(courtesy Raphael Fraenkel, Kibbutz Beit Ha’Emek.) Ernst Fraenkel was a member of the
Markenhof Group.
14 Letter to Meir Dizengoff from Hermann Struck in German, dated 17 November 1931. The
Tel Aviv Rabbinate authorized the donation in a landmark decision to Mayor Meir Diz-
engoff saying that the museum should be considered as a genizah (repository for sacred
objects) and that, as such, it could receive the synagogue windows. In a letter to Meir
Dizengoff from Konrad Goldmann, dated 17 May 1932, Goldmann had requested confir-
mation that it was permissible to donate a synagogue window to a museum, wondering
whether it perhaps should go to the Great Synagogue of Tel Aviv, which was just then
being completed. Dizengoff, in response, asked the Tel Aviv Rabbinate for a legal opinion,
and it ruled that a museum is considered a genizah, a repository for sacred books and
objects (letter to Konrad Goldmann from Meir Dizengoff dated 31 August 1932). All let-
ters are from the Historical Archive of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, File “Correspondence
regarding the Founding of the Museum, 1931–1932.” See Goldman-Ida, Friedrich Adler,
108–105 [English side].

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176 Goldman-Ida

stage, Benjamin took it out of the frame. During the war, it was kept at the
Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris with the help of Georges Bataille (1897–1962).
Scholem received it after 1940, and on Scholem’s death his wife presented it to
the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
The discussion surrounding the artwork begins with Scholem’s 15 July 1921
poem (see Appendix),15 which appears to be responding to a personal and di-
rect mystic experience that Scholem had. Then, in a 1931 essay on Karl Kraus
(1874–1936), Benjamin uses the angel in a satanic context. This is followed by
Benjamin’s Saturnic or melancholy prose on the artwork in his diary on two
consecutive days in August 1933. Much later, Benjamin uses part of Scholem’s
poem to introduce Section ix of the 1940 Theses on the Philosophy of History or
On the Concept of History, in which he elaborates on the angelic image as the
“Angel of History.”
By following Scholem’s poem and the four texts of Benjamin’s over time,
along with Scholem’s interpretation, we take part in a changing appreciation
of Klee’s Angelus Novus. Our perception of the angel subtly changes from that
of a violent aggressor, indeed equated with Satan, to a heavenly creature seek-
ing happiness, and then to an Angel of History on a mission. Scholem discusses
this change in perception: “The wings become then ‘wings of patience,’ which
resemble the wings of the angel that are open in Klee’s picture, in that they
maintain themselves with a minimum of exertion…. He has been pushed for-
ward from the future and goes back into it…. In the final version, the way of the
return home is no longer the flight into the Utopian future, which, rather, has
disappeared here…. Only later, does the angel become the ‘Angel of History.’”16
We shall begin with the notion of the angel as satanic as it first appears in
Benjamin’s 1931 essay on Karl Kraus:

Neither purity nor sacrifice mastered the demon; but where the origin
and destruction come together his rule is over. Like a creature sprung
from the child and the cannibal, his conqueror stands before him; not a
new man; a monster, a new angel. Perhaps one of those who, according to
the Talmud, are at the same moment created anew in countless throngs,
and who, once they have raised their voices before God, cease and pass
into nothingness. Lamenting, chastising, or rejoicing? No m
­ atter—on this
evanescent voice the ephemeral work of Kraus is modeled. Angelus—
that is the messenger of the old engravings.17

15 See n. 5 above.
16 Scholem, “Walter Benjamin and His Angel,” 2257.
17 Benjamin, “Karl Kraus,” 457.

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 177

Did Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), who opens the Second Elegy of his
Duino Elegies (1923) by describing angels as schrecklich (terrible), influence
Benjamin’s notion?

Every Angel is terror [schrecklich]. And yet,

ah, knowing you, I invoke you, almost deadly
birds of the soul. Where are the days of Tobias,
when one of the most radiant of you stood at the simple threshold,
disguised somewhat for the journey and already no longer awesome
(Like a youth, to the youth looking out curiously).
Let the Archangel now, the dangerous one, from behind the stars,
take a single step down and toward us: our own heart,
beating on high would beat us down. What are you?18

Certainly, Benjamin was familiar with Rilke, as was Klee. Benjamin met Rilke
in Munich in 1915, and it is likely that he was aware of the Elegies, which were
published in 1923, and that he could dialogue with them, as did Klee.19 All three
were together in Munich in 1905 (along with Martin Buber). Yet neither the
philosopher nor the artist had a direct, documented connection to the poet.
According to S.D. Chrostowska, “behind [Rilke’s] lament lies the split human
consciousness, our position between angelic transcendence and animal natu-
ralness/openness of pure being, which deprives subjective experience of unity
and flow.”20
Scholem does not introduce Rilke into the discussion of Angelus Novus,
although he was also familiar with him as attested to by a letter of his to
Benjamin.21 Other relevant figures of the period who could shed light on the
wider context of Benjamin’s texts and of Klee’s artwork include Anatole France
(1884–1924), whose book La Révolte des Anges (The Revolt of the Angels; 1914),
Klee had a well-worn copy of, and which Scholem had written to Benjamin
about.22

18 Rilke, Duino Elegies, 39. See “Rainer Maria Rilke, The Duino Elegies,” trans. A.S. Kline, Po-
etry in Translation, accessed 12 May 2017, http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/
German/Rilke.htm#_Toc509812216.
19 See Luprecht, On Angels, 7071, n. 36.
20 Chrostowska, “Angelus Novus,” 49, 50, n. 24.
21 “Two volumes of Rilke’s letters also found their way into my hands en passant, and they
have moved me profoundly.” Letter from Gershom Scholem to Walter Benjamin dated 11
April 1934, in Smith, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932–
1940, 104.
22 Ibid., 66f., nn. 26–28.

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178 Goldman-Ida

Beatrice Hanssen connects the Kraus essay with Benjamin’s later references
to the Angelus Novus:

The Kraus essay now accented the destructive nature of Klee’s angel.…
Klee’s angel suddenly revealed its other, dark side, that of an animal-
like predatory angel (Raubengel; consuming angel) equipped with
claws.… Not only the claws but also the predatory nature of the angel
point ahead to the fragment Agesilaus Santander, which Benjamin wrote
two years after completing the Kraus study during his exile on Ibiza [in
1933]…. Initially, it is tempting to see in Benjamin’s angel a version of
Nietzsche’s Übermensch (Higher Being), along lines similar to Heidegger’s
interpretation of the angel that appears in Rilke’s Duino Elegies. …At the
same time, it must be noted that Benjamin carefully distinguished the
Unmensch from the hedonism of Nietzsche’s Übermensch who was to
overcome the “Krankheit Mensch” (the illness of being human).23

Now let us look at the first of the two diary entries that Benjamin wrote in Au-
gust 1933 while fleeing to Ibiza from Paris. There he refers to the work Angelus
Novus as Agesilaus Santander, which Scholem deciphered as an anagram for
Der Angelus Santanas (The Angel Satan). In the first notation, which Benjamin
writes on 12 August 1933, “he pulls him along on that flight [Flucht] into a future
from which he has advanced. He hopes for nothing new from the latter except
the view of the person he keeps facing. So I journeyed with you, no sooner than
I had seen you for the first time, back from whence I came.”24
In the second notation, written the next day, on 13 August 1933, the angel
becomes more aggressive; the violent aspect of the figure is mentioned, that is,
its claws and its knife-sharp wings:

His image falls away when the name becomes audible. He loses above all
the gift of appearing anthropomorphist. In the room I occupied before he
stepped out of my name, armored and encased, into the light, [and] put
up his picture on the wall: [the] New Angel…. resembles all from which
I have had to part: persons and above all things. In the things I no longer
have, he resides…. Indeed, perhaps the angel was attracted by a gift
giver who goes away empty-handed. For he himself, too, who has claws
and pointed, indeed knife-sharp wings [,] does not look as though he
would pounce on the one who [he] has sighted. He fixes his eyes on him

23 Hanssen, Walter Benjamin’s Other History, 122–124, nn. 20–27.

24 Benjamin, Selected Writings, Vol. 2: 1927–1934, 712.

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 179

firmly—[for] a long time, then yields by fits and starts but incessantly.
Why? In order to pull him along with himself that way into the future on
which he came and which he knows so well that he traverses it without
turning around and letting the one he has chosen out of view.25

Then in his Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), Benjamin speaks of An-
gelus Novus in terms of an iconic image, the “Angel of History,” prefacing his
remarks with an excerpt from that early birthday poem by Scholem:

My wing is ready to fly

I would rather turn back
For had I stayed mortal time
I would have had little luck.
– gerhard scholem, “Angelic Greetings,” 1921

There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there

who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something
which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open
and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so.
His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a
chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles
rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause
for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken
the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is
blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong
that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly
into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before
him grows sky-high. That which we call progress is this storm.26

According to Scholem, Benjamin’s Angel of History expresses the dialectic be-

tween the Christian baroque and Jewish mysticism:

The Christian view is that history is a “process of incessant decay.” The

decay is the wreckage, pile of bodies, and general catastrophe that the

25 Benjamin, Selected Writings, Vol. 2: 1927–1934, 714. See also Scholem, On Jews and Judaism
in Crisis, 204–208.
26 Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” 259. Translation taken from https://
www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm.

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180 Goldman-Ida

Angel is not able to turn away from. The opposing view, that of Jewish
mysticism, is the belief that according to the kabbalah it is not the angel’s
responsibility to make whole the catastrophe of history; it is the Mes-
siah’s responsibility.27

Benjamin stipulates that historical materialism, the subject of his Theses on

the Philosophy of History, cannot succeed without a messiah. The historical
materialist’s move into the future is problematic because even if it does take
the past into account and considers humans as historical beings, it does not
and can never redeem the catastrophe of the past. Scholem states that when
historical materialism constructs “an act like redemption or revolution, [it]
continues to have about it something of that leap into transcendence which
these Theses on the Philosophy of History seem to deny but which is even then
implied in their materialistic formulations as their secret core.”28 This is where
Benjamin makes the leap to a messianic belief. The past is so horrific that even
if one is the ideal historical materialist he will not redeem the past, and one
cannot penetrate the “secret core.” But for Benjamin, the only way redemption
can come is from the messiah.29
In the drawer of Scholem’s desk in his study at home was found a small etching
of Isaiah’s Vision of The End of Days by A. Balzer (Fig. 9.13), who is probably
to be idenftified as Anton Balzer (1771–1807) from Bohemia. It is perhaps a
reminder of the messianic urgings that had prompted many to immigrate to
Israel, although Scholem refused to equate Zionism with messianism.

5 The Motif of Jacob and the Angel—Paul Klee and Walter Benjamin

Paul Klee created more than fifty images of angels, especially in the last years
of his life. His final work Ohne Titel (Untitled) (Composition on a Black Ground;
1940) (Fig. 9.14) includes on the lower left an image corresponding closely to
a pencil sketch made that same year—Engel, Noch Hässlich (Angel, Still Ugly;
1940) (Fig. 9.15). This image has been interpreted by Will Grohmann (1887–
1968) as that of Jacob and the Angel.30 The same intertwining of figures, indi-
cating a merging of identities between angel and man, is found in a graphic
rendering drawn by Kate Baer-Freyer of Jacob and the Angel that Scholem

27 Scholem, “Walter Benjamin and His Angel,” 85.

28 Ibid., 84.
29 “Gershom Scholem: Walter Benjamin and His Angel,” Introducing the Frankfurt
School, 25 April 2008, https://frankfurtschool.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/gersholm
-scholem-walter-benjamin-and-his-angel/.
30 Grohmann, Paul Klee, 358–360.

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 181

had included in his journal Die Blauweisse Brille in 1916 (Fig. 9.16). Both artists
sought to express visually in their versions of Jacob and the Angel the ambigu-
ity of the epic struggle in the biblical narrative.
A reference to Jacob and the Angel was also made by Scholem in describing
Benjamin’s ties to Klee’s Angelus Novus. Scholem seems to foreshadow Klee’s
own sense of identity with Jacob and the Angel in his last work Ohne Titel
(1940) (see Fig. 9.14). Here is Scholem connecting the angel in the biblical tale
to Satan:

One may perhaps point to an almost obtrusive parallel between Benja-

min’s relation to the angel and a Jewish tradition about Jacob’s battle with
the angel in Genesis 32:27. Here, too, the tradition of the Talmud and the
Midrash fluctuates about whether the angel with whom Jacob wrestled
at the break of the day was an angel of light or perhaps Samael, the name
of Satan or Lucifer in the Jewish tradition.
The man who, according to the text of the Bible, wrestled with Jacob
and at the break of day said to him: “Let me go for the dawn is coming,”
supposedly [also] said to him, according to one version of the Jewish leg-
end, “I am an angel and since my creation the time has until now not
come for me to say my hymn (before God) but just now the hour for the
singing has come,” and just as Benjamin’s angel [in the work by Klee An-
gelus Novus] makes him suffer for having prevented him from the singing
of the hymn by detaining him in his room, so also does the angel of the
biblical narrative and the legend spun out of it exact suffering for the
delay of his hymn by dislocating Jacob’s hip joint.
In the Midrash (Genesis Rabba 78:1) an opinion is expressly brought
up that Jacob’s angel was among those new angels ever and again cre-
ated anew whose task is limited to the singing of hymns. Just as Benja-
min in his encounter with the angel transfigured his own name Agesilaus
Santander to a new secret name, so too does Jacob according to the bib-
lical narrative change his own name in his battle with the angel and is
from then on called Israel. And in the Jewish legend too the angel refuses
upon Jacob’s question to give his own name… like [the figure in] Angelus
Novus’s not wishing to give his real name to Benjamin.31

There are many parallels between Benjamin and Klee: the notion of secrecy,
of a secret name; the notion that the angel is not successful in fulfilling its
mission; the overall background of World War i and its ramifications; and the
fact that both men related the angel to death and destruction, equating it with

31 Scholem, “Walter Benjamin and His Angel,” 51–89.

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182 Goldman-Ida

Satan.32 For Carl G. Jung (1875–1961), “the psychologist’s interpretation of Jacob

and the Angel is utilized as an example of the need for secrecy in the process
of individuation.”33

6 At Home: Trude Krulik—Drawings, 1940–1949

It seems that Scholem was also available to appreciate the immediacy of

experience regarding the artwork in his own home. In Scholem’s dining room
hung a charcoal drawing by his friend Trude Krulik (1900–1976) entitled
Kabbalist (1940–1949), which Scholem referred to as the Author of the Zohar
in His Youth (Fig. 9.17), no less. When we look closely at this work, we find that
it carries a powerful emotive mysticism. Krulik was undergoing treatment in
Jungian depth psychology at the time and making sketches after her dreams,
using her powers of imagination and archetypal symbols to reach her inner
self—symbols found between the collective unconscious and consciousness.
Another work of hers, Somnambulist (1940–1949) (Fig. 9.18), is indicative of this
process where the circles represent the total unity of the psyche. For her, the
Kabbalist is like a somnambulist dominated by an ancient mythic image.
Another work of Krulik’s in Scholem’s home was The Jester (1940–1949) (Fig.
9.19), which had features very much like Scholem’s. His wife, Fania, was not fond
of it.34 However, in the Jungian understanding, although the trickster is an evil
entity,35 it heralds the coming of the messiah: it is evil heralding salvation.36 In
Jungian terms, the trickster is the darkness that gives birth to the light.

7 The Application of Scholem’s Methodology to Art Historical

Analysis

In a letter to Salman Schocken dated 29 October 1937, Scholem professed an

early interest in the metaphysics of kabbalah as a way to penetrate the “misty
wall of history”:

Many exciting thoughts had led me … to [an] intuitive affirmation

of mystical theses which walked the fine line between religion and

32 See Luprecht, On Angels, on secrecy: 7981; on death: 1312.

33 Jung, “Late Thoughts.”
34 Thanks to Esther Liebes, former director of the Gershom Scholem Library, The National
Library of Israel, Jerusalem.
35 See Jung, “On the Psychology of the Trickster Figure,” 143.
36 Ofrat, “The Mandalas of Trude Krolik,” 9.

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 183

nihilism.… So I arrived at the intention of writing not the history but the
metaphysics of the Kabbalah…. [To penetrate] the misty wall of history …
an illusion without which in temporal reality no insight into the essence
of things is possible. My work lives in this paradox.37

Scholem came to believe that the metaphysical could be discovered through

the academic tools of philology and history. In a “students evening” with
Scholem at Beit Meir, Hechal Shlomo, Jerusalem, on 23 February 1980, at which
I was present, he maintained that his belief in historical criticism as a tool for
Jewish Studies in general and kabbalah in particular had not changed: “That
was my belief then, that is my belief today.”38
Yet, Scholem’s decision to embark on the philological approach of historical
criticism may have been in part the result of the expectations of the faculty at
the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. According to Moshe Idel:

Gershom Scholem was a historian … because at the time at the He-

brew University in Jerusalem it was impossible to be anything else….
[Although] Scholem was also a phenomenologist by nature, within the
given framework of Jewish studies [then] … he would not have been
judged serious. In the second half of the 1940s, Scholem began to be in-
vited to the [Eranos] conferences on comparative religion in Switzerland.
The most interesting work of Scholem was said at those conferences, lat-
er to be included in the book On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism.39

In his theoretical work, Scholem preferred a symbolic system to the possibility

of a direct encounter with the divine. Scholem assumed in the introduction to
On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism that the historical experiences of the Jewish
People were crystallized into mystical symbols in a kind of exile-­redemption
theology: “The spiritual experience of the mystics was almost inextricably in-
tertwined with the historical experience of the Jewish people…. At the heart
of this reality lay a great image of rebirth, the myth of exile and redemption,
which assumed such vast dimensions with the Kabbalists.”40
Yet, in his private encounters with art, Scholem allowed for an immediacy of
experience that was at times mystical in content. We find the acceptance of a

37 Biale, Gershom Scholem, 31f.

38 “Gershom Scholem meeting with students,” Beit Meir, Hechal Shlomo, Jerusalem, 23 Feb-
ruary 1980, audio tape, recorded by David Schonberg, The Music Collection and Sound
Archive, The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, CD 05235-05237.
39 Horowitz, “Doresh Kabbalot,” 19.
40 Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, 2. Original edition Zur Kabbala und ihrer
Symbolik. For a critique of this view, see Idel, Old Worlds, 89.

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184 Goldman-Ida

direct, mystical encounter in Scholem’s initial reaction to Klee’s Angelus Novus

when he sends Benjamin the birthday poem on the painting’s image, which
reads: “Ich bin ein unsymbolisch Ding, bedeute was ich bin” (“I am an unsymbolic
thing / what I am I mean”).41
In terms of methodology, when it comes to Scholem’s views on art and his
approach to art history, we would expect him to be so inured in the rigid con-
straints of the symbolic system of the kabbalah that he would assign values
and meanings to artwork in a way similar to the use of iconography in the
study of Christian art with its laid-down rules of prefiguration and attributes.
But for Scholem, this approach does not appear to supply the tools requisite
to the study of art. Instead, he remains open to changes in ideas that reflect a
changing perception of the artwork, such as in his interpretation of Benjamin
and Angelus Novus.
Certainly, Scholem knew how to recognize a symbol. Concerning the Star of
David, he wrote:

Actually the six-pointed star is not a Jewish symbol; a fortiori it could not
be the “symbol of Judaism.” It has none of the criteria that mark the na-
ture and development of the true symbol. It does not express any “idea,” it
does not arouse ancient associations rooted in our experiences, and it is
not a shorthand representation of an entire spiritual reality, understood
immediately by the observer. It does not remind us of anything in Biblical
or in rabbinic Judaism.42

I would like to suggest that, paradoxically, it is not the metaphysics of Scholem

that contribute to our understanding of art but rather the tools of his historical
and philological criticism. The approach found repeatedly in Scholem’s
analyses—whether of the colors of the sefirot or of the essence of the Torah
in the kabbalah—presents a variety of different categorical statements, even
within the same geographic area, time frame, or circle of kabbalists, in order to
underline the multiplicity of beliefs.
This openness to a pluralism of ideas enabled Scholem to view an artwork
not in a categorical way but from the perspective of the viewer and, as such,
subject to change. Rather than beeing seen as a weakness, this can be viewed
as a strength: the use of multiple meanings aligns, for an art historian, with
phenomenology: the ontology of the object is in flux, changing along with

41 Scholem, Greetings from Angelus (Paul Klee, Angelus Novus), to W.B, on 15 July 1921 (see
Appendix). In Scholem, The Fullness of Time. For the whole text, see BOMB Magazine,
“Three Poems.”
42 Scholem, “The Curious History of the Six-Pointed Star,” 243.

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 185

differing perceptions of the viewer. This is a valuable methodology for the

study of art.
And this was Scholem’s position when presented with the changing meaning
of Klee’s Angelus Novus. For David Biale, Scholem’s analysis “leaves one with
the inescapable impression that Scholem relates to Benjamin as he might
to a Kabbalistic writer and subjects him to the same kind of ‘decoding.’”43
According to Scholem, “Benjamin knew that mystical experience is many-
layered, and it was precisely this many-layeredness that played so great a role
in his thinking and productivity.”44 Scholem’s appreciation of the multilayered
approach comes to the fore in his own interpretation of the artwork by Klee
and in his ability to view changes in its perception as part of the ontology of
an artwork in flux.
We have thus seen the acquaintance of Scholem with art on many levels,
from a sophisticated awareness of art contemporary to his period, to an imme-
diate, visceral reaction to an artwork of Paul Klee’s and the application of his
own methodology in kabbalistic research to art historical analysis. Somewhere
between, we sense the interest in phenomenology and openness to changing
perceptions of the same artwork, a feature of process philosophy.
It seems to me that it is in the realm of art that we come closest to an
­appreciation of Scholem’s inner self.

Appendix
Greetings from Angelus
(Paul Klee, Angelus Novus)

by Gerhard Scholem

—To W.B., on 15 July 15 1921

I hang nobly on the wall

and look no one in the face
I’ve been sent from heaven
I’m of the angelic race.
Man is good within my realm
I take little interest in his case
I am protected by the Almighty
and have no need of any face.
The world from which I come

43 Biale, Gershom Scholem, 197, n. 94.

44 Scholem, “Walter Benjamin and His Angel,” 201.

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186 Goldman-Ida

is measured, deep and clear

what keeps me of a piece
is a wonder, so it here appears.
In my heart stands the town
where God has sent me to dwell.
The angel who bears this seal
Never falls under its spell.
My wing is ready to beat
but I would gladly return home
were I to stay to the end of days
I’d still be this forlorn.
My gaze is never vacant
my eye pitchdark and full
I know what I must announce
and many other things as well.
I am an unsymbolic thing
what I am I mean
you turn the magic ring in vain
there is no sense to me.45

Figure 9.1 Unknown Artist, Martin Buber, Berlin, 1915, Die Blauweisse Brille, 1 (August 1915),
edited by Erich [Chiram] Brauer and Gerhard Scholem.
(Photo: Courtesy of the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem).

45 BOMB Magazine, “Three Poems.”

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 187

Figure 9.2 Kate Baer-Freyer, Königen von Saba (The Sabbath Queen), Berlin, 1916, Die
B
­ lauweisse Brille, 3 (January 1916), edited by Erich Brauer and Gerhard Scholem.
(Photo: Courtesy of the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem).

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188 Goldman-Ida

Figure 9.3 Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), vignette next to Chapter i. “Einleitung” (Introduc-
tion) from Über das Geistige in der Kunst: Insbesondere in der Malerei (Concerning
the Spiritual in Art: Especially in Painting), Munich: R. Piper & Co., 1911, woodcut,
9.9 × 4 cm. New York, Collection Museum of Modern Art, Gift of Lucien Gold-
schmidt, 324.1958.3.
(Photo: Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York).

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 189

Figure 9.4 Jean Arp (1886–1966), Mouvement, illustration for Vingt-cinq poèmes by Tristan
Tzara, Zurich: Collection Dada, 1918, woodcut, 19.5 × 13.5 cm. Tel Aviv, Collection
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Gift of Charles and Evelyn Kramer, New York, through the
American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum, 90.32.6. © 2018, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
(Photo: ©Tel Aviv Museum of Art, by Elad Sarig).

Figure 9.5 Erich (Chiram) Brauer (1895–1942), Simson + Delila (Samson and Delilah), Berlin,
1916, Die Blauweisse Brille, 3 (January 1916), edited by Erich (Chiram) Brauer and
Gerhard Scholem.
(Photo: Courtesy of the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem).

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190 Goldman-Ida

Figure 9.6 Karl Schmidt-Rotluff (1884–1976), Mädchen vor dem Spiegel (Woman in Front of
a Mirror), 1914, Berlin: Graphisches Kabinett J.B. Neumann, 1919, woodcut, 49.8 ×
39.9 cm. New York, Museum of Modern Art, Committee on Prints and Illustrated
Books Fund in honor of Joanne M. Stern, 129.2012. ©2018, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
(Photo: Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York).

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 191

Figure 9.7 Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), La Femme au Violon, Spring 1911, oil on canvas, 92 × 65
cm. Private Collection, on long-term to the Bavarian State Painting Collections,
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. ©2018 Succession Picasso.
(Photo: Courtesy of the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich).

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192 Goldman-Ida

Figure 9.8 Meir Katz Poppers (d. 1662), Ilan Aroch [Long Sefirot Scroll], Warsaw: A. Bomberg
Press, 1864 (detail), India ink, bronze ink on paper, letterpress, 519 × 24.5 cm. Tel
Aviv, gfc Trust, 028.011.033-011.
(Photo ©Ardon Bar-Hama).

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 193

Figure 9.9 Hayyim Vital (1542–1620), Sefer Etz Hayyim (Book of the Tree of Life), 18th century,
India ink on paper, Ashkenazi script, ink drawings. Formerly Jerusalem, Hechal
Shlomo, The Wolfson Museum of Jewish Art, Qu. 12, fol. 20v.
(Photo: Courtesy of the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem,
Microfilm F22570).

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194 Goldman-Ida

Figure 9.10 Jung-Juda Chalutzim (Young Judea Pioneers) at the Hachshara (Agricultural
Training Settlement), Markenhof Estate, Black Forest, Germany, c. 1919.
(Photo: Courtesy Theodora Efrat, Kibbutz Beit Zera).

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 195

Figure 9.11 Friedrich Alder, Twelve Tribes Window, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1919,
­manufactured by Eduard Stritt, stained-glass, leaded, 6 two-part windows,
81 × 35.5 cm each. Tel Aviv, Collection Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Gift of Konrad
(Elchanan) Goldmann, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1932.
(Photo: ©Tel Aviv Museum of Art, by Daniel Sheriff).

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196 Goldman-Ida

Figure 9.12 Paul Klee (1879–1940), Angelus Novus, 1920, oil transfer and watercolor on
paper, 31.8 × 24.2 cm. Jerusalem, Collection The Israel Museum, Gift of Fania
and Gershom Scholem, Jerusalem, John Herring, Marlene and Paul Herring,
Jo-Carole and Ronald Lauder, New York, B87.0994.
(Photo: ©The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, by Elie Posner).

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 197

Figure 9.13 Isaiah’s Vision of The End of Days, reproduction of etching by A. Balzer,
probably Anton Balzer from Bohemia. Jerusalem, Gershom Scholem Library,
National Library of Israel.
(Photo: Batsheva Goldman-Ida).

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198 Goldman-Ida

Figure 9.14 Paul Klee (1879–1940), Ohne Titel (Letzes Stilleben), 1940,
Untitled (Last Still Life), 1940, oil on canvas, 100 × 80.5 cm. Bern,
Zentrum Paul Klee, Livia Klee Donation.
(Photo: Courtesy of Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern).

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 199

Figure 9.15 Paul Klee (1879–1940), Engel, noch hässlich, 1940, 26, Angel Still
Ugly, 1940, 26, pencil on paper on cardboard, 29.6 × 20.9 cm, Bern,
Zentrum Paul Klee, 26.
(Photo: Courtesy of Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern).

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200 Goldman-Ida

Figure 9.16 Kate Baer-Freyer, Jakobskampf ( Jacob and the Angel), Berlin, 1915, Die
Blauweisse Brille, 3 (January 1916), edited by Erich (Chiram) Brauer and
Gerhard Scholem.
(Photo: Courtesy of the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem).

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 201

Figure 9.17 Trude Krolik, Kabbalist or Author of the Zohar in His Youth [also known as
“Baal HaZohar” (“Master of the Zohar”)], 1940–1949, charcoal, 60 × 46 cm.
Jerusalem, Gershom Scholem Library, National Library of Israel, Gift of Fania
Scholem, Jerusalem.

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202 Goldman-Ida

Figure 9.18 Trude Krolik, Somnambulist, 1940–1949, pastel, 60 × 40 cm. current

whereabouts unknown.

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Scholem’s Views on Art and His Approach to Art History 203

Figure 9.19 Trude Krolik, The Jester, 1940–1949, pastel, 60 × 40 cm. Current whereabouts
unknown.

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204 Goldman-Ida

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